Published

‘The Final Girls’ Trailer: A Feel-Good Horror Movie

Max Cartwright, daughter of 1980s horror movie scream queen Amanda Cartwright (Malin Akerman), goes with her friends to watch her mother’s movie on the anniversary of her death. When a fire accidentally breaks out in the theater, Max and her friends cut a hole through the film’s screen to escape it, and mysteriously land inside her mother’s movie. Max is reunited with her unsuspecting mother, and together they must survive the movie and escape back into the real world. They decide to follow ‘the final girl’ (the last girl alive at the end of the film who eventually kills the bad guy) but when the final girl unexpectedly dies, the group has to fight back themselves.

The wide-eyed Max is played by Taissa Farmiga, known for her multiple roles on the TV anthology series American Horror Story, and is joined on-screen by other fairly well-known film and TV actors: Nina Dobrev (from The Vampire Diaries), Alexander Ludwig (The Hunger Games, Vikings), Adam Devine (Pitch Perfect, Modern Family), Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development), and Tom Middleditch (Silicon Valley).

The film spoofs (with love) every cliché horror movie trope in the book, from a serial killer preying upon a remote summer camp, to attractive girls getting brutally killed as a huge masked figure attacks them with an oversize bloody knife, cringe-worthy pick up lines, endless chainsaws, drills, masks and other horror paraphernalia, and of course, epic screaming. A comedic homage to ‘80s horror and slasher movies, the trailer sets us up for nostalgic moments, over-the-top horror, meta-comedy and even a few tugs on the heartstrings. If it’s possible to make a “feel good horror movie” then The Final Girls looks like it’ll make it happen.